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Outlook 2013 loses field heading (from, subject, received, size, etc.) and none of the solutions I've found on the web have fixed this. Quite annoying, and super confusing for people who are a bit less computer literate.

Editing styles in Word 2013 is more confusing, I liked the 2010 way better.

That said, you probably should do the upgrade, particularly if it doesn't cost you anything, just to be somewhat more compatible with the rest of the world.

2013 is likely the last version for me, when LibreOffice Calc is able to open my Excel simulations with VBA I'll probably switch over. If I didn't have so many ties to legacy MS software (it's a curse) I'd go 100% Linux in a second. Mint with the new Cinnamon UI is really sweet.

I use free Open Office, Writer, Calc and Impress, for business and personal use. Once over the learning curve I've yet to find something it can't handle. I no longer throw away money to MS. We shouldn't be using proprietary file format for exchange anyway but that's another OT debate.

Any version of MS Office is fine for writing posts for the digital piano and synth forum -- you can write your post in Word, then copy and paste into the text box to post it on the forum (if you don't want to just type directly on the forum). For this purpose, either version of MS Office is perfectly fine...it doesn't make a lick of difference.

That is, unless MS has developed a new virtual piano or synth add-on for the latest version of Office. If this is the case, maybe you'd have all kinds of reasons to upgrade!

Any version of MS Office is fine for writing posts for the digital piano and synth forum -- you can write your post in Word, then copy and paste into the text box to post it on the forum (if you don't want to just type directly on the forum). For this purpose, either version of MS Office is perfectly fine...it doesn't make a lick of difference....

I have even lost track of what M$ has been doing with Office. The company I work for has sort of an agreement with M$ to allow us to buy the Enterprise edition of Office 2007 at a significantly discounted price (basically for like 20 dolars instead of 800) and we're allowed to use it for as long as we work in that company so I nabbed a copy several years ago. It did come in handy every once in a blue moon in the past.

However, I was very annoyed by the "ribbon" UI they introduced in that release and to this day I have not understood the motivation for completely changing the old user interface that seemed to work just fine. Sometimes I think Microsoft has been making its "innovations" just for the sake of making them and to make it all look good in the marketing materials.

However, I was very annoyed by the "ribbon" UI they introduced in that release and to this day I have not understood the motivation for completely changing the old user interface that seemed to work just fine. Sometimes I think Microsoft has been making its "innovations" just for the sake of making them and to make it all look good in the marketing materials.

I don't have any experience with the ribbon that many seem to hate, but in Word 2003 "Reading Layout" gives you weird squat pages out of nowhere (until you disable it), and some other newish feature that produces bizarre icon thingies that won't go away after you cut and paste.

But it's kind of weird to run across the same fundamental bugs again and again with a different, some might argue more annoying, UI in front of them. Couldn't they spend more time fixing them rather than monkeying with the part we already know and are accustomed to? Change for change's sake are speed bumps on the autobahn.

I don't have any experience with the ribbon that many seem to hate, but in Word 2003 "Reading Layout" gives you weird squat pages out of nowhere (until you disable it), and some other newish feature that produces bizarre icon thingies that won't go away after you cut and paste.

But it's kind of weird to run across the same fundamental bugs again and again with a different, some might argue more annoying, UI in front of them. Couldn't they spend more time fixing them rather than monkeying with the part we already know and are accustomed to? Change for change's sake are speed bumps on the autobahn.

Thankfully I didn't have to battle that UI myself very often as I have been trying to avoid using the whole Office package as much as possible. I think, even though the old UI was not perfect, it was at least relatively straightforward to use and fairly "time-proven" (after all, pretty much all other Windows apps still use that sort of a user interface).

But it wouldn't be Microsoft if they didn't mess things up the way they did, all the while shouting out all these things about innovation and such. Heck, I bet they had that interface patented.

Just watching them do, redo and undo the system setting dialog screen with every Windows release since XP gives me a headache.

I use free Open Office, Writer, Calc and Impress, for business and personal use. Once over the learning curve I've yet to find something it can't handle. I no longer throw away money to MS. We shouldn't be using proprietary file format for exchange anyway but that's another OT debate.